Esther Perel

I have been a couple's therapist for almost 14 years and I have often thought that the stories that took place in my room, the revelations that people had, the transformations that took place really needed to be reaching people outside the room. The room became too small and I wanted to open the door and lower the four walls and have many people be able to attend over here,

so to speak. But I didn't want to do it with patients. I thought my practice is my practice. I still have an active practice and none of the people of the podcast have ever been patients nor will they ever be. But I copied the model of intensive three-hour consultations and that I then edit. And audible came, basically one day, this is eight years ago and that was my first house,

then came Spotify, then Nowisbox. And right now I just released a series called The Ark of Love and it follows different stages of the love story from the beginning to the happily divorced. And I think we live in the most dense urban environments and we don't know what's happening in the neighbor's house and we often feel very alone with our relational dramas. And I thought I can recreate a virtual village. I can have you here as if you're a fly on the wall to the stories

of others. And even if it's not exactly your story, you will relate to something. And that's how it began. And it's been eight years and now it's weekly. And now I also do individuals where people send questions from all over the world. And I called them by surprise. And now it took pieces of the podcast and brought them into a live tour. I'm doing this first US tour after doing Australia and we're doing the West Coast in September. But it starts with inviting people into the

office by listening to vignettes from the podcast. And I think that first of all it's global. So it reaches places where there is not much therapy or access to any of this. And it normalizes. It doesn't just belong to a therapy office and it's not just pathology. It's existential dilemmas. Brings the conversation about relationships in the public square. And it's almost a kind of a public health campaign for relationships at a time when we are often becoming more and

more socially atrophied. In the past I think of therapy as something going on for years and years sometimes a lifetime. How much impact can you have in a single session? It would be surprised. It depends what is a goal of a session. I see these as consultations. I see these as therapeutic conversations. I do not define this as therapy. But it is therapeutic and it is often even more therapeutic to the listeners. But also to the people who come because we follow them. We write to

them we find out what's happened and so forth. And when you do a consultation you listen and then you choose a focus. And the focus is not only the topic. I'm going to focus on this issue. People come in with a story of why they think they're stuck, of what they think is making this so painful. And often they repeat the same story for a while. And I consider a good consultation, first session actually, that you come in with one story and you leave with another.

Fantastic. Because when you tell a different story you open up the possibility for a new experience. So no two sessions are the same. How do we create our personal story? Because you narrate your experience. And every story is a portal to an entire experience and that experience carries meaning. And that meaning influences my behavior. It influences how I perceive you, how I think

you perceive me, how I the expectations I bring to relationships. I mean it's dense. It's like you know you open up one sliver and it opens up a vista to an entire realm of relational experience. And I imagine we create those stories depending on how we feel that particular day. If we're in a good mood we might have one story for in a bad mood. We might have a different story from the same experience. True, but it goes further. It's not just how I feel today. It's also about how I feel

about myself, period. It's also about what I have internalized about how I think people experience me or they see me. And I will then apply this. It becomes a filter, a lens through which I will interpret certain situations. So it can be ad hoc. It can be long standing. It can be in the moment and it can be internalized, you know, as how I see myself in relationships. I think people like me. Well, that opens up a whole vista. I think people don't like me. I think I have always to prove myself.

I think I have to convince them that I'm worthy of being paid attention to. I think people think this and that about me. They think I'm stupid. They think I'm, you know, it's very quick and everybody has an answer. Does our worldview change with every one of these interactions? No, sometimes our worldview gets reinforced because we reinforce it. Because we have what is called confirmation bias. And we will look for evidence that reinforces our belief and will

disregard evidence that challenges it. But you listen to music. If you hear the first few notes of a piece, you often can guess what the next notes will be. That is the same in a relational story. If I hear the first few thoughts of a story, I have a sense of what it may connect with. So, you know, if you tell me a few pieces about you relationally, I connect dots, people, and ideas. So to speak, as we do in music, it has to do with the fact that I look at relationships like

stories and relationships is one element of life and one element of our mental health. I happen to think that the quality of our relationships determines the quality of our life. But I am a narrative thinker. So it is a point of view. It is other ways to think about all of this. How different is the session that you record versus the session that happens privately in the room? Does it change at all when there's an understanding that it's being recorded?

I mean, a studio here. If I spend more than five minutes here and we start recording a song, I very quickly forget that I'm being recorded. Because if I am aware of it, then I'm performing. I'm not in flow. I have taped sessions of patients for decades that I used to even videotape and that I would use only for professional training. So I did it with a built camera standing in a

corner. But within five minutes, we all forgot there is a camera. You either are in it. And when you notice someone is aware of the camera and they're censoring themselves, then it's obvious. It's not something that they're trying to hide. I think most of the time there is no difference. People used to come to my office. They sat in the waiting room like, you know, patients would do. And then they were mics. That's it. There's no camera. And we go for three hours. That's about

four sessions. People are very appreciative to be there. They usually don't believe they were ever going to make it. You know, somebody, one of the two people in the relationship or one of the three people, one point, decided to fill in an application, convinced that they would never hear from us. And here we are when the producers call them. I don't have anything to do with the selection. And they interview them and get a sense. What does it that you're grappling with?

What would you like from a session with a staff? I get a sense as to is this something that I can address in three hours. There are things that I don't think I would do justice. And so I don't choose. But if I think I can bring something to these people, then we meet. And when it's the one hour with individuals, same idea. So it is authentic. It is the real thing. Yes. Except that they're not patients. They're people who say, I'd love the opportunity to talk with Esther. We are

struggling with this and that. Infinity, divorce, loss, illness, conflict. Has doing these one time, three hour sessions impacted the way you're regular sessions go? No, because I've always done that. I've always had a practice where I saw people weekly or by weekly, but longer sessions and then people intensive, one, two day intensive, one time shot. So no, it's more that there's a different rhythm. It's the difference between short stories and novels. It's the difference between short

form, long form. It's like you are more in a position of having to choose. I could go here, I could go here, I could explore this. I'm going to take this direction and I'm going to stick to it. And then I think at the end of the session, did I choose the right direction? Or should I actually have gone somewhere else? Was exploring why she was done with the relationship, more important as to exploring why he wanted to hold on to it? For example, you know, so in that sense, you have

to commit yourself. Whereas if I see you next week, you come in and I just say, I've been thinking about this thing that you mentioned last week. I'd love to pick up there. Yes. Typically, for the couples that you see long-term, do they each do individual therapy as well? No, sometimes they do. Sometimes I see them separately on occasion, not ongoing. And sometimes they have an individual therapist. And sometimes I do individual therapy as well or family work. So

it's really what is needed. Here's the thing. There are couples who really do better by doing the work together. And there are couples who probably need to first do a few conversations alone. They are more defensive when they are together. They don't want to be nearly as accountable. There's something to explore. There's something that they haven't decided if they want to share. And so you create a boundary and you meet with them alone. But it's not individual therapy. It's

the way I work with the couple. And it's to involve seeing them sometimes alone. How would you say the conversation between a couple changes when they're alone versus when you're in the room with them? Ah, I am a bridge. Sometimes I'm hair mess, the messenger. I'm the the Greek girl that helps bring the message from one person to the other. And I help you express, articulate something that is difficult for you to someone who either wants to hear it or

doesn't want to hear it or struggles to hear it. It's different, the transactions. Sometimes I'm the boundary because you are intrusive to each other and you're entering each other's membranes with stuff that is really hurtful and aggressive and hostile. So then I'm a boundary. Sometimes I am an envelope. You don't know how to protect the relationship. And I offer this protective envelope. Sometimes I am the whisperer. So I have different rules for different situations.

Each of them, the conversation is very different because you are in the room, because that's why people come. If people could talk alone and think that it was a satisfying experience, then they don't come to you. They come because they're stuck and they don't know how to get from under it. And typically does it go on for a long period of time or might it be a short period of time?

Maybe very short. Sometimes there's something that needs to be closed. You know, they are small minor interventions and then they are complicated surgeries and then they are complete renovations. And then they are putting the key under the mat. Do you typically have an instinct early on whether the couples can stay together or not? Yes and no. I think that when people come to me rather than to the lawyer, they do often have a wish to work something through.

They're still attached to something. If I see one person who has reached the stage of indifference, then you kind of say this person is here on their way to the lawyer. You know, that person is done, has checked out. You need two people or you need at least one person who is willing to receive what the other person is offering them. If somebody has cut off, then you kind of say, this isn't going to happen. This thing is done. It's dead upon arrival. If I've been mistaken,

this is the more important question. I have been mistaken. I have had people where I thought they've crossed the rubicon and then it wasn't. It just didn't heal at a level that they needed to heal. And I have had people where I thought, I don't know who wants to live like this, but sometimes people do. I think you have to remain very humble. People stay together and people part for a multitude of reasons. Only they have to live with the consequence of their decision.

So it's very easy to have opinions. But you don't live with the consequence of the decision itself. Only the people themselves. To dismantle a relationship or to dismantle a family is complicated. It's a lot of people. The relationship is a microcosm of two or more, but the system is a much broader thing. We don't often think about that. The friends, the family, the extended family, the colleagues, the friends of the children, if there are kids involved,

the kids themselves. I think we sometimes underestimate how painful and complex the unraveling, the disengaging of a relationship is. We know it because there's plenty of people who are divorced, but that doesn't mean they have ever separated emotionally. They may be divorced, but they're making each other's lives miserable for years to come. Is the idea of a couple who are having a difficult time taking time apart, ever a good idea?

Yes. Tell me the benefits of that. I think that sometimes it is the right thing for a couple to have a trial separation in which each of us is going to go off and do a little bit of thinking without reacting. That's the difference, a bit of reflecting rather than reacting, hopefully to take some accountability on what I do that makes this relationship so challenging, not just on what you do. I mean, couple's therapy is off on the drop of center. I bring my partner and they fix it.

And I'll help you because I'm an expert on what's wrong with them. So to get that distance sometimes for some people is really the beginning, a timeout. Then during that distance I sometimes suggest that they write to each other. So I do a lot of letter writing. I think there's a beauty of letter writing that is different from the I talked to you while I look at you. Sometimes I have them read the letters out loud to each other.

And then sometimes it's meet once every two weeks. Do not meet in your homes, meet in a neutral place, meet on a bench in a park, meet at the river, meet at the beach, meet at a place where you can actually sit in parallel, like fishing rather than face to face, it's side by side because you need more distance and you need distance that will allow you to come close. So it's choreographed. It's not just take a break. If you take a break but there is no choreography and purpose to it,

then most, you know, you can easily come back and you just do the more of the same. So it's very choreographed and it's very deliberate in its purpose and in its design and we design it together. Me with the couple, we come up with what will this break be like? I once had a couple that while they were on break they could only meet once a week but only to go dancing and they were not to talk to each other ever because they had lost all sense of joy with each other, all playfulness. They had

no aliveness but they used to dance a lot. They were salsa dancers and I just thought, okay, silent dancing once a week, two hours and then you go home, each to your own place. Beautiful. So it's that. It's not, there's something very creative actually in doing this. It's not a linear thing, you know, to go and check your wounds. If in a couple one of the members remains wildly in love and the other falls out of love. So painful. What happens? Various things can happen.

We're doing a total anatomy of couple them. The first thought I had as you asked is, because I think it's good to illustrate, is a couple where he basically said that he wanted out and she was really holding on and I had asked them to each write an ode to the relationship because they had had a beautiful 17 years and the ending is as important as the beginning and

it's often not nearly paid enough attention to. They came in and they each had written this letter, you know, what I'm thankful for, what I take with me, what I hope you take with you, what I wish I had done differently, what I wish you had done differently. And it was one of the most beautiful red letters. It was about the trips they had done,

images, a restaurant, a dish they like. It was so detailed, granular, visceral, such a life was in that letter and his was like, I appreciate, you know, how you raise the kids and you're a good person and there was just no life in it anymore and I was in tears with them because I felt it, I knew it and I needed to tell her that she needed to listen to him because he had met someone else and he was done. And this is one version,

is one person is not really hearing that the other one is done. Then you have the version of, I think you're done but you don't want to admit it to me. So I know, I feel it, something's missing, you know, look and looking at me, you don't touch me, you don't desire me, you avoid me, you ignore me, you spend your time doing ten other things. I mean, you know when someone wants to be with you or not and you keep denying it and now you can deny it either because you're hiding something or you can

deny it because you worry about me. Take it, see somebody being afraid. Of what? Feeling an obligation and not living up to their obligation. That's right. But the obligation is often, that's exactly where I was going and it's often connected to the fact that I experience your fragility. I worry what you would do if I tell you the truth. And so I feel an oversence of responsibility. It's a crazy situation that I have to lie to you in order to protect you. That is the bind.

It's a real complicated psychological and moral bind. So that's the next thing. Sometimes people come to a session and that is what sometimes a very short thing where you know someone is really asking you to help them say, I'm leaving. Yes. And so sometimes you make the other person angry because they say you took this side and you want to say because when one person wants out, this is one of the few things you can't force. There's no version of a relationship where one person wants in and the

other person does it point in. You can't have a successful relationship based on that polarity. You can have a nice companionship. You can have an affectionate companionship. Look, let me put it to this way. I think that some relationships, this is the thing that I talk a lot about in the show now because I get this question specifically. Some relationships find their strength and their beauty, the nature, the quality of the connection that is between us, quality of engagement that we have.

But some relationships ask afold things. You and I are together and it enables us to have a family life to take care of my alcoholic brother, to raise our children together, to have a social status when I had none for God knows how long, to have a political career which you would not have if you don't have a partner, to have an artistic career because somebody is taking care of home for you.

So it's like a merger, more than a marriage. I call it a scaffolding. It's an architecture in which the strength of the relationship is not what is between us but it is what us together enables us each individually to access and to have. And it's actually more similar to the traditional model of marriage that exists throughout history. We don't idealize that relationship these days but I think that in many instances it's very clear, you know, everybody knows why they're there and

if it's done with respect and care, who are we to say? Fundamentally the message I have for a lot of people is there isn't a one-size-fits-all. This institution of marriage, you know, if it is to survive has to become really diversified. And when I say marriage, I mean committed relationships, I'm not talking about just the legal, the legality of marriage, it needs to really have multiple formats. We live twice as long. We can't start at 20 something and think that at 70,

we are going to be living a similar relationship. So most people in the West today are going to have two or three relationships or marriages in their lifetime and some of us will do it with the same person. That's interesting. How are the odds of marriages staying together in the new world versus other cultures where marriages are arranged or they're not based on the things that our marriages are based on? Look, marriage has undergone a massive makeover, so have relationships

and that's part of why they're so interesting in this moment. They're really going to an extreme makeover. So what's changed? You used to marry and have sex for the first time. Today you marry and you stop having sex with others. You used to marry and it was once in a lifetime. You didn't like it, no exit, you stuck. You don't like it, you can hope for an early death of your partner.

You understand? Monogamy was one person for life. Today monogamy is usually one person at a time and everyone tells you, easily, I'm monogamous in all my relationships plural without a blinking of an eye. So we're using words, but the experience of those words has fundamentally shifted. Marriage was primarily an economic arrangement until not too long ago. Women had very little economic independence. It took till 76 in some of the countries right here for women to be able to have

their own bank account. So divorce becomes prevalent and prominent when women have economic independence. And for women to have economic independence, they need to for the first time actually be able to have their own bank account. So we understand very well that marriage is a love story, but it is also an economic story. And so divorce became a major shift. We marry in the 60s in the United States,

80% of people in their 20s were married. Today, 20% of people in their 20s are married. So we are no longer having what is called the cornerstone marriage in which I meet you in the beginning of my adult life and we build it together, we have the capstone version of marriage. The capstone means I've already worked on my career, may even have gotten the place of some sort, and you are there to help me reinforce this hard one identity on which I am working. And we put the capstone

on top of it. It's a completely different model. You mentioned one of the partners finding someone else. How often is that the case for breakups? When meeting someone else is the reason for the dissolution of a relationship. It's either I don't want to cheat on you and I met someone and no longer want to be with you or it is the product of an affair. So how prevalent are affairs? The numbers are very high. They don't usually necessarily end to the end of the

relationship actually. So it's an interesting thing. The affairs are very high in numbers. Male and female actually. Has it always been the case? No. It's always been the case that men pretty much had a license to cheat and all kinds of evolutionary and biological theories come to justify where men are natural rumors. And women, you know, as seen as these domesticated creatures, of course we don't really know what women want because women have rarely done what

they wanted. They have done what was safe. We do know that if she has a car and she gets to go to places away from home, she may also have her inclination and we know that he doesn't just go with other men. So it's like with whom in the village, like here, do you think the man was cheating? It's not like he went to the neighboring village. Basically, men practically had a license to cheat and women still get stoned in nine countries today. Wow. That's astounding.

This is not a gender equal proposition. Wow. But the interesting thing about it is that the man who cheats doesn't dishonor his family. The woman carries the honor of the whole family. So the weight of the cheating, the meaning that is assigned to the cheating, and then the more westernized version, he can do this just for the sex, for the fun, for the adventure, for the this, for the excitement. Whereas she does it, then it means something. She fell in love with

someone. So this takes you into a whole exploration of how do we distribute and assign the meaning of sex to each gender. I wrote a whole book about infidelity, it takes 10 years meeting couples. But let me tell you this. You asked how prevalent it is. If I ask an audience, have you ever been affected by the experience of infidelity in your life? Either because you had a parent who wasn't faithful

and may have left. Either because you are yourself the child of an illicit relationship, or love, or night. Either because you are one of the three protagonists in the adulterous triangle. Either because you are the friend on whose soul the somebody has been weeping, or you are the one that is the confidante of somebody, about 85% of the audience raises their finger. And I'm asking this in the shows. So it's not a rare occasion and it is not just a few rotten apples. It's a

company. It lives in the shadow of committed relationships. L-M-N-T. Element Electrolikes. Have you ever felt dehydrated after an intense workout or a long day in the sun? You want to maximize your endurance and feel your best? Add element electrolytes to your daily routine. Perform better and sleep deeper. Improve your cognitive function. Experience an increase in steady energy with fewer headaches and fewer muscle cramps. Element electrolytes. Drink it in the sauna.

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Honesty is a word that has to always be examined in context and in the cultural context as well. You are differently honest if you're about to be stoned, for example, or excommunicated, or lose your children, or will be beaten. So I think that it's very important that we don't just say honesty is good, it's noble, it's the ideal situation because honesty is often measured by its consequences. What about in the context of the one-on-one relationship? That's exactly what I'm saying. Really?

Yes, I'm saying that very much as part of a one-on-one relationship. Wow. So this was a subject, there's a whole chapter on it instead of affairs, because honesty is not the same if you have a different power distribution in the relationship.

If one person has all the financial power, if one person can physically attack you, if one person can rob you for your kids, if one person can dishonor you to your company, if one person can go and tell your parents who will then reject you completely, etc., etc., then your honesty is different. In addition, we in the West have a view of honesty a little bit, especially in the United States, I would say, that honesty is about true telling, and that true telling is the moral cure.

But in other countries, in other cultures, honesty is not about confession and revelation as much as about what it will be like for the person who hears that truth to walk the street. So the honesty is measured, but can you still walk down with your head up? Or is this just going to be a humiliation? And the humiliation is worse than dishonesty.

And that is a very important thing to understand when you work with couples, because I work with a lot, a lot of mixed couples who have different ideas and different experiences and different cultural legacies around honesty. What it means to be honest, you know, now, is it important to tell you that I absolutely am not interested in you anymore? Is it important to tell you that I have been

faking it with you for the last 22 years? Is it important to tell you that I actually fell in love with this person with whom I had this two-year affair, but now I decided to stay with you, but my heart opened up there, like it never has opened for you. For what? Sometimes you ask, you know, honesty can be cruel. Sometimes honesty is about me telling you 10 years later that I handed a fair for what?

So cleanse my conscience so that now you had a person who was on his dead bed and he decided to basically, you know, tell the story of his double life a week before he dies for what? So that you can die in peace and she can tumble in her bed every night for the years to come? So you're suggesting there's a balance between honesty and kindness? Yes, yes, but this is a contested idea. I mean, I have opted for that notion, but I know that it is a contested idea. You make a good

case. I mean, you just made a very strong case. But that because I came to this conclusion on the basis of session upon session where I just thought, really, is this going to help these people? The one about the death bed, that was like, you know, I thought, sir, and here she was, you know, when he went years struggling in her head, you know, in turmoil, twisting and turning up with the truth so that he could die in peace. So that was the one that really toppled me.

Yeah, in that case, the honesty was cruelty. Yes, honesty is often cruelty. That's the thing that I'm saying is that, or at least honesty needs to be measured against kindness and against cruelty. I think that it is not just a noble value that sits above all else without consequences. And it is that's where I start by saying honesty is contextual. It belongs to a particular relationship. You know, I have heard more than one person tell me that I needed to tell my five

year old what their father or their mother was really like. They need to know the truth. Seriously? I mean, we can use the word truth in many different ways, but it's like, it's a power maneuver. It's I'm going to make sure that nobody will ever like you or respect you ever again because you lied to me or you cheated on me and I'm hurt. But it's not because you lied and cheated to me that you are by definition not able to remain a good parent of any kind, whatever the gender,

whatever the orientation. So that's the most common one. Is I'll tell the kids, I'll call your job, I'll tell your parents, I'll tell your grandma, I'll tell the person who matters to you the most, what you are really like because they need to know because it's the truth because somebody's got to be honest with them. And then when you listen to this whole language, it's honesty for revenge. Yeah. It's not describing revenge. You're describing revenge.

It's honest. So the word honesty is often used in multiple settings. Now, I have also situations where somebody is asking a question point blank and you are refusing to answer and it becomes a form of gas lighting. And I'm asking you three times, has there someone else and you kept in you to say no, no, no, no. And I know that this is not a situation where there is a vulnerability and a danger attached to it. And I think you're making your partner feel like they're crazy.

And there I think it's time to say the truth. So it's extremely contextual. And sometimes you then meet the person alone and you say, look, how do you think this is going to go? You know, your partner has found proof. Your partner shows it to you in your face and you continue to treat them like they're just delusional. That is not going to fly well. And you're going to pay for that, at some point. And it may be, what is the problem about telling the person? And what is it that you

can say? And then we decide, you know, partial truth is sometimes good too. But when people are in an active state of denial and gas lighting, this is the actual definition of gas lighting, then you say time to be honest. It's not a simple answer to your question. No. And you said that you revised your position based on your experience. What are other places where you've revised your opinion based on your experience? Oh, there are many things, you know, I will start with the thing that I

just did now. I just am releasing a course, a bundle of two courses, bringing back desire and playing with desire, in which I try to take complex ideas about intimacy, about sexuality, about the difference between sexuality and eroticism, about the intricacies of desire, about the dynamic between love and desire, all of that. And you don't have to sit in my office for this.

I'm going to accompany you outside. This is the same reason why I started the podcast, but then I started to do these online courses or my card game, which is it's all ways of creating an extension of myself at scale for something that actually has existed for 34 years I worked alone in my office. I never did any of this. So this is very, very recent for me. And I thought

there's no way you can do that and maintain the complexity, the integrity of the work. I think this has been the biggest shift for me was after the TED talk I decided I will speak to the regular people and I will bring my stuff to the regular audience. The same material that I use for teaching clinicians, I will create a course with a workbook for the regular person. It's a beautiful idea. So many people who don't have access to you now have access to you. Yes, but it took me a while to

figure out how to do it. And to accept it. I kept thinking I'm losing my soul or I am between a major principle of confidentiality of the sacredness of the therapeutic room of all of this. It's like the idea of creating something, you know, mass for people all over the world and all of that. How to do it was never really an issue. The first was the principle of doing it. That was the bigger issue for me. So that's one thing. I think there's a place recently where I

actually noticed that there was a shift. I was working with a couple that was dealing with infertility and they were wandering and where are they at and how much time. And I just thought I have sat with too many people where I, in the beginning, would not there to say something because I was told to be neutral. And then I had to deal with all these people who waited too long. And I just said, I have no stake in this. But I do need to tell you, you're 39. You're talking like you're 29.

And that is developmentally incorrect. You're not equal. Your sense of time and his sense of time are not the same. And that's something that modern women sometimes are challenged to accept because they fought so much for a certain level of equality and sameness. And then you have to say equality is one thing, but sameness is not the same. And equality is actually something that you do based on the acceptance of the differences, not based on an illusion of similarity.

This is an example where I thought I would not have there to say that before. But I felt that my responsibility is to not pretend and accept the illusion. I think when I was younger, I probably had some ideas about who should stay together and who should not. And I have become much more humble about any of these. People have a ton of different reasons of why they stick around and why they go. I mean, probably the most important one is the reason why

I wrote mating in captivity, which was exactly that. I had been trained to think that sexual problems are the consequence of relationship problems. If you fix the relationship, the sex will follow. And every therapist I knew that was honest to use the same word, would tell you that many couples improved greatly in the kitchen and he did nothing for the bedroom. That in fact, the rules of love were not necessarily the same as the rules of desire. And that love and desire,

they relate, but they also conflict. And that's when I began to work on mating in captivity, which I now wrote 20 years ago. And the book is alive, and well, because I thought this more to the story than this, but the opposite is true. If you're able to bring back the aliveness in your couple, sexual or erotic, doesn't have to be just sexual, you actually will improve every other part of the relationship. And this idea that sexuality is not a metaphor of the relationship,

but it's a parallel process. It tells its own stories and it lives by its own principles. That was a big departure in the field, and it changed a lot of things in the field. There's a reason that mating is out and about as it is, because it took something that was presented as a truth, but it was actually a truism. How significant is the sexual portion of a long-term relationship?

I know this was going to be the next one. It depends for whom. There are people for whom the physical intimacy, the physicalization of their feelings, the place where their sexuality gives them access to, is so important that for them, they have plenty of platonic relationships, and the sexual expression, the erotic intimacy, is essential. They feel dead without it, or deadened. And then there are people who say, if I never had sex for the rest of my life,

I would miss it. And the only thing you hope is that these two don't live in the same relationship, because then it's complicated. The design will be perfectly tailored to your needs. Discover unbreakable creativity with fluid engines, a highly intuitive drag and drop editor. No coding or technical experience is required. Understand your site's performance with in-depth website analytics tools. Two spaces, everything you need to succeed online.

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are most of the couples you meet with fall in two? So I did a course recently on conflict. It's called turning conflict into connection. And I basically divided it in a choreography of three main dances. Fight, fight, fight, flight, flight, flight. It's either we attack each other. We are reactive. We come after each other. We attack. We blame. We defend. Or it's I go after you. You are avoiding. You remove yourself. But I won't let you

and I'll follow you around the house. That's just one image. But that's a good image. Or it's we don't talk to each other for three days. So that's a classic division that's not of mine. That is a in the relationship. You ask about what are patterns, right? Structures. A lot of the structures in the relationship are based in the initial attraction. That's interesting. The very thing that was attractive in the beginning

is often the thing that becomes the source of conflict. Tell me more about this. So for example, you are the risk-taker. You are the adventurer. You try out things. You explore. Your arms are open like this. I meet you. And I am drawn to that fluidity, to that openness, to that you know, you make me do things that I would never have there doing. And you take me to places I never thought I could go, et cetera. And you are drawn to me because I'm solid. I'm reliable.

I'm structured. You're liquid. I'm structured. That's a classic, you know, complementarity. And when it works well, it's complementary. And I like the fact that you're stretching me. And you like the fact that I ground you. And each of us is representing the part of the other that is less developed, so to speak. Or that's more of a challenge. And then one day we realize that your adventurousiveness,

to me, feels a bit irresponsible, careless. You know, you don't notice what needs to be done in the house. You know, you waste your money. You wait every, the hundred versions of why you're, what I used to think was openness and risk-taking and freedom and all of that. And my bringing you a solidity and a security and a groundedness now feels rigid. Feels like I don't want to try anything. Feels like I say no to everything. Feels like I'm critical of everything you do.

This is a classic story. Many times when a couple comes to me and they are stuck around an issue like this, my first question is what drew you to each other? One is detail oriented, one is big picture, one is structure, one is liquid, one talks, one doesn't talk, one expresses feelings,

the other one doesn't. But the one who doesn't like the other one who expresses the feeling, when you ask them what drew you to each other, they tell you that I really liked the way that she used to say what she thinks, what's on her mind, what he thinks, and they think, you know, and I was so taken. So don't start with the conflict, start with what drew them to each other and you will often see that there is an arc between what has become the source of conflict

and what once was the source of attraction. Very interesting. I never would have guessed that. Tell me how the courses work. I say to you, we argue too much or I say to you, we seem to never fight and it doesn't seem like that's always actually such a great thing. Do you think we could be slightly avoidant? What does that mean for us? Or I think we should do something that would make a stronger or I say to you, let's do this course. It's a one hour course. The videos are one hour,

but the workbook is the whole exploration. So I accompany you. I ask in the workbook the questions I would ask you if you were with me, I help you do things alone and then to bring it to your partner. I give you frameworks in which you can then try new things and you do it together at best. Sometimes you do it alone and then you say to your partner, you should do this too. Sometimes you do it alone and you don't tell your partner because you think maybe there's

something with me. It's not a replacement for therapy, but it is a way in which you have a sense of agency that you can improve things. You can change things. There's something very positive about it. It's proactive. We have become dull. It's we lack excitement. It's since the kids, you know, or since the death of my mother or since my menopause or since your surgery or since your economic hardship, we have lost a certain joy, a liveliness, vitality between us.

And it gives you a structure. It gives you a tool that you can come back to that is neutral. I'm talking to you. I'm on the camera. I'm on the screen. And I'm not taking sides. And I am just saying, let me help you. Let me accompany you in bringing back joy, peace, depth, conversation, communication into your relationship. It's a great idea. How many different courses have you done? I have done one that on conflict that is out. I have the waiting list open for the two on

sexuality. One is that is really more focused on how you get unstuck, which is about bringing desire back and what blocks it. What does it mean when suddenly it's a shutdown inside of us or between us? And then how do we create more playfulness, more curiosity, more mystery between us? And then I'm going to probably do another one on infidelity. So one out two coming and another one in the pipeline. Beautiful. People often listen to the podcast and they say, how do we get more of that

for us? So I think when you asked me before, like, what has changed? I thought that therapy takes place in the therapy office. And now I think that certain therapeutic interventions can take place in the public square, on a podcast, in a course, or in the tour. I mean, the tour is really an amazing thing to see what people are bringing and talking about. But it's partly because they've been listening to me in their ears and they have a parasocial relationship with me. They already

trust me or know me before they come. Even though I ask at every show how many of you have never heard of me and where dragged here kind of recruited, and there was a plus one. And there's a fair size of people who don't know where they landed. But what is intimacy at scale? In a way, that's what I do with the podcast. And I wanted to know, can I do this in real life on a stage where you feel like I'm talking to you even though there are three thousand more people in

the auditorium with you. So in the course, it can't be too specific because it's talking about something that there are many variations on. For example, yes. I ask in the new course, the one on sexuality. I say, consider this. Sex is not just something you do. Sex is a place you go. Where do you say you go in sex? What parts of yourself do you connect with?

Is it a place for spiritual union for you? Is it a place to express your mischief? Is it a place where you can finally be taken care of and not be responsible and in charge of everyone and everything? Is it a place where you can be safely dominant? Is it a place where you can surrender? Is it a place where you can express infantile wishes? Where do you go? That's the question. Then I give you ten different thoughts about what I mean by where do you go?

And then you answer. So it is a combination of broad and very specific. And I imagine in each of these courses, they would be beneficial even if you're not in a relationship. These just sound like human development. Yes. So for example, in the conflict course, I think one of the more important ideas in the conflict course is something that I draw from the work of Howard Markman. And basically, I say, it's not what you're fighting about

that you should focus on. It's what you're fighting for. Most arguments, conflicts, fights in a relationship are about three things primarily. Power and control, whose decisions matter more, whose priorities dominate? Care and closeness, can I trust you? Do you have my back? And respect and recognition, do you value me? Do I matter? Power, trust, value. When you have your fight, I want you to ask yourself, what is it you fighting for in this moment?

So for example, and that's a piece that I've been playing in the tour, where the couple starts to have an argument about the fact that he left the closet open and that the cat went into the closet. And it looks like they're fighting about the cat or the closet or the cat litter and they are like at each other's throat with this thing. And I'm like, no. It's not about the cat. It's not about the

cat. What he's fighting for is that every time she comes down and starts to argue with him and tell him how incompetent he is and what he's not doing, he hears his dad and he is telling his father in his head, you ain't the boss of me. Nobody's going to tell me what to do. So that's what he's fighting for. No priorities are not my priorities, you're not the boss of me. What does she fight for?

Every time he says, I'm not doing what you're telling me to do, she remembers how she grew up all alone, taking care of her two siblings with her mother being gone all the time and thinking, will I ever be alone my whole life? And she fights for care and closeness. I can't trust you. You don't have my back. Indeed, I'm next to you and I will always feel alone. The biggest fear of my life has finally materialized. That's what they're fighting for. And it's very powerful because the idea

everybody can get. Yes. But every couple and every individual taking the course alone, being in a fight with their siblings or with their friends, I mean this is not just for romantic couples at all. This is really co-founders. This can be colleagues. What are you fighting for? Give me an example of your last arguments and let's see what is the thing that gets you going. Where's the hurt for you? And the anger and the dis and the rest. And this example of the cat

liter is so obvious. And then he says in the clip, you know, I hear my dad, you know, who was doing me son. If you don't have to tell me the rest of the sentence. Son usually means that you've got that hand above the head that is pressing you down. And from that place you say, nobody's going to make me down like this. And she's not doing that. She's actually asking him to be there with her. So you get the story that's underneath the conflict and it's those kinds of very simple but

extremely pivotal, sensual elements of relationships. That's why when people write, they say, I've had conversations with my partner like I've never had. It unlocked something for me. I mean, it takes everything you want to hear. It's that the danger of making it more simple. But then at the same time, simple doesn't mean simplistic. Typically do both partners in a marriage see the relationship in the same way? No. Absolutely not. It's a course in comparative literature.

No, no, no, usually not. I mean, it depends. You want a sense of shared reality. Polarization is not about two different opinions. Polarization is when one person says to the other, how could you even think such a thing? That's the polarization. It's like you wonder if they actually

were in the same room when this happens. Wow. You know, when you work with people alone and they tell you about their relationship and then one day you meet the partner, it's amazing how little the partner resembles what was told you and what you imagined on the basis of what was told. So it's about the coexistence of two different experiences of two different stories.

One of the most useful things one of the couple's therapist ever told me and my husband when we consulted years back and he said, it's about 80 things that you can disagree about in a relationship. It's just true, a number. It's irrelevant. It says, if you agree on six of them, you're good.

And I just never forgot it. It was just like the point is not that you agree. The point is that you can accept that you have very different responses to things and that you don't take one person's response as the disqualifying of the other person's experience or response. Welcome to the House of Macadamias. Macadamias are a delicious superfood. Sustainably sourced directly from farmers. Macadamias, a rare source of Omega 7 linked to

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Visit houseofmacadamias.com slash tetra. Is compatibility based on shared world view? That's a part of it. What else? Compatibility is based on differentiation. Differentiation is the ability to stay connected to yourself without losing the other. Or in reverse the ability to stay connected to the other without feeling that you are negating yourself. Relationships are based on attachment and differentiation.

Togetherness and separateness. Us and I, it's the both end. If you have a relationship that is only in the differentiation, it often will lack closeness connection, trust vulnerability, openness, all of that. If it is only based on the attachment, it lacks individuality, freedom, space, air, and fire needs air. In the sexual domain or in the erotic domain. So, I think of compatibility, it's less about shared. Some relationships are overlapping circles.

And they define compatibility as we like the same movies, we read the same books, we like the same restaurants, we eat the same foods, we come to the party together, we leave the party together. But some relationships have half overlapping circles and some relationships live very well with the strong nugget of a few things that matter to both of us that we really share and then entire parts of their life that are very separate from the other. And that's when I say

there is no one-size-fits-all. I think all three can be really wonderful models. Sometimes they involve two people, sometimes they involve more than two people. But compatibility is not about shared interest. Compatibility is about the ability, I give you an example. If I'm upset, says one person, I want you to hold me. But they often live with a person who, when they are upset, they actually need to be left alone. And that's the same couple that I described before could

continue by extension. This would be not an unusual distinction between them. Compatibility is that you can hug me because you know that that's what I need and I can leave you alone because I know that that's your way to reset. But what happens in infinite relationships is that I tend to give to you that which I would want you to give to me. But it isn't necessarily what you need or want. So I define compatibility, not in both of us like this, but in I can give you

what suits you and you give me what suits me. The recognition of each other. Yeah. And that's the differentiation. How different is it when you're speaking to a couple who are newly married or together for a couple of years versus together for 17 years or 18 years? What changes? History. History can be a wonderful thing to connect to to remember that it once was or that you have something solid to fall back on. But history can also be an accumulated mountain of resentments

over 17 years. You know when people come after 17 years and they're yelling, you kind of know that they probably didn't start yelling. They once was someone nice who asked it kindly and maybe had someone who answered to them in a way that didn't satisfy them. They're not even saying they answered them not nicely or they didn't answer. But it didn't suit them. And over time they began yelling. And now somebody else comes in and says I'm with somebody

who yells at me all the time. And you could start by saying what makes you yell all the time or why do you yell all the time or you can start by saying do you have things that you think have contributed to how your partner became such a yell. That's not the question the anticipate. No. I'm not blaming you. I just think you know if I talk all the time and I complain that my

partner never says a word. At some point it would be useful for me to realize that it is my constant talking that maybe has contributed to my partner or if I'm constantly telling you that whatever you did isn't good enough. At some point if you stop trying there may be something about the fact that I constantly tell you it's not good enough for you to say well then do it yourself. We cook, create each other. We're not the same person in every relationship. And we know it

when we have new relationships that we actually can be quite different. So when you meet newly weds or people who are in the beginning I think one of the most important things that change is that people used to come to therapy when they were in crisis when there was a problem especially couples therapy. And why did couples therapy become more dominant and more prevalent? It coincides with the fact that for the first time the survival of the family depends on the happiness of the couple.

When you couldn't divorce, when you were excommunicated, when you had economic dependence seriously it didn't matter if your relationship was bad because you were not going to go anywhere. Once you can leave you need a good reason to stay. So from that people began to come more and more to cover therapy because the only thing and this is why I say on the list of what your kids need make sure to protect the relationship, nurture the relationship because ultimately if you

don't nurture the relationship then may not be a family and the thing you wanted to avoid the most and the reason for which you didn't pay attention to your relationship which was to be with your kids all the time becomes the very thing that is actually going to make the kids not have the family. It's really really sad. It's a really important point. But the beginning is that more and more people are coming very early on because they want to prepare themselves, they want to learn

the skills and I think that is a wonderful thing. Absolutely. Tell me about how you learned your craft. I was interested in relationships very early on. I remember asking my mother once, my mother has been about ten years old and a whole group of her friends had lost their husbands at the time and I said, oh my mom, they must be feeling so lonely and my mother said no, they're liberated. They no longer have to wash anybody's socks and it kind of was like a jolt to the

romantic idea. It was like marriage is one thing, a love story is a different thing and don't have illusions and just one not bad marriages. That's what you did. That's what we're very. Where was this? In Belgium, in Antoine. But I was interested in love stories. My mom at the cash register in the store, we lived above the store. She has these photo romance novels. Romance novels. But they were like pictures. It's a very specific French thing.

Cartoon, small, small, small photographs. They like film. I see. It's like a film but cut like a cartoon. So it's very real. But it's all, you know, Cinderella stories, betrayal, love stories, the ordinary girl, the ordinary man, the popular one. I mean, it's just like a whole set up like that. But how I learned it, I was mentored primarily. I've sought teachers my whole life who I could learn from and who had an investment in me or often saw something that I didn't yet see.

So I saw teachers. I'm an avid student. You know, it's a beautiful craft because you can do it till your brain stops, basically. I'm voracious, curious. I speak nine languages. I think that has helped a lot. So I think cross culturally, I think that there is not one way to say things or to do things. I think of it as an art, more than a science or more than a skill. I never created a school because I thought I will integrate the many schools that I learned from and no two

sessions would be the same. And that's kind of how I continue to learn. How does parenthood change a relationship? Sex makes babies and babies often spell erotic disaster in couples. I mean, there is no bigger transformation than from two to three. And how does three threaten two sometimes? So it depends if you ask what doesn't having a child to begining. It's not the same in the beginning as it is later on. But in the

beginning, your love story is with this kid often. You nibble, you tickle, you hold your door, your eye gaze, it's like everything that lovers do when they meet is now with this child. And so having a child is a redistribution of all the resources in a relationship. Financial time, attention, touch, laughter, all of it. And as it should be. And then at some point, you need to recapture some of that energy into the relationship. What's the timeframe? I would say 18 months,

not six weeks. A lot of the books tell you six weeks, I think it's mistaken in my opinion. I think at least a year. But that doesn't mean that the couple goes on ice. But it just means that there is a real awareness that is there something magnetic? I mean, evolution did something to make us stay focused on this baby because otherwise, we would not have stayed attached to them, especially when they died very young. Which it's not that long ago that most child mortality by H5

was pretty much a feta-complete. So how did you expect parents to be attached to children when they didn't have any sense that this children would actually grow up? And they need you to be something really magnetic about these babies to keep us grounded and keep us close to them. But what it does, at best, it opens you up to places of love and of fear and of dread and of desire to protect. I mean, it's every feeling you've ever known intensified multiple times. That's at best.

Then it's the how do you create a space for the couple inside the family? Especially when, as I said, it's the survival of the family that depends on the happiness of the couple and not on the marriage contract. Then there is, you know, sometimes people say, sex after babies, after kids, you must be kidding. And then I say, stop thinking about sex, but think about erotic energy, aliveness, playfulness, curiosity, imagination. Why is it that we try to do new things with

the children? Non-stop, new clothes, new activities, new experiences, and couples are willing to do the same old and same old and think that that's what's going to maintain them. And it doesn't. So I often say, the erotic energy is alive and well, but it's eros-redirected. And at some point, that's the energy that needs to be brought back. The couple needs to do new things. The couples needs to find their places of curiosity, of risk-taking, of new learning,

of expansion. Not just a familiarity. Familyarity breeds security. Novelty breeds desire. Desire is connected to aliveness. In your sessions with couples, how much do the couples speak and how much do you speak? I am active and I'm very engaged, but I listen a lot. And then sometimes, I say something for you. I articulate something for you. Then I watch, if you do the same head motion, you're doing to me now that says yes. And then I may say, say it in your own words. So I lend my voice

to you. And then I have, you need to personalize it. I don't lecture that much. And sometimes, when I do, I cringe. I think, oh shit, Perl, be quiet. How much of the problems in relationships come from a communication problem? I saw a play yesterday. It was one act. And it was played three times. The scene is, he says, I don't want you to go and spend a year abroad. She says, but this is a unique

opportunity. Finally, he says, I don't want to be away from you. And she says, well, why don't you come with me? And it was played three times, one after the other. One time, the woman travels, one time, the man travels, one time it's two men. One time it's done. I'm going to miss you. One time, it's done. I said, why would you leave me? The affect underneath, the tone change the tone. Same lines. It was really

the perfect play to analyze. So these people were expressing their inner thing very well. But one time it was done with tremendous amount of aggression. One time it was done with blame. And one time it was done with longing. So it's the quality of the communication. It's the feeling that is underneath that drives the communication. Communication is the expression of something. When people come in and they say, we don't communicate. What does that mean? It means

that the three things I said about what are you fighting for. We don't communicate because when he says something, I feel like he's basically telling me that I can't trust him. Or we don't communicate because he just says, this is how it's going to be. We don't communicate because I don't feel like I'm ever recognized. I'm totally unappreciated here and I'm invisible. So of course we don't communicate. But the communication is the manifestation of something.

You know, what happens when you try to say this to your partner? That's the communication. The communication is a sequence. It's both what's being said and how it's being received. And how what I am saying to you is going to make you say something to me. The more I do this

and the more you do that. And you know, the more I put you down and the more you go quiet and the more you go quiet and the more I get all upset that I'm all alone here and the more I get all upset that I'm all alone here, the more you feel intruded upon and the more you're feeling intruded upon and the more you distance yourself from me and the more alone I feel. We call this the vulnerability cycle.

The more the more it's I contribute a feeling in you which then makes you react from that defensive survivor position which then traps into my vulnerability that makes me react in that defensive position. It's a figure eight and you track a communication. It's not just you listen to it. You track it from the moment you said this. What was the tone? You know, seven percent of communication is the words. 38 percent of communication is the affect and 57 percent is the nonverbal.

That's interesting. If I'm off in the numbers, I'm not too far off. Yeah. I think that's very, very important and I have a dear colleague, Heddish Leifer, who hasn't beautiful exercise that I've borrowed from her. When she makes a couple have an argument as in not communicate for 13 minutes, no less. And then when you're done having the argument, she says, you see this couple they're sitting next to you in a restaurant and they just had an

argument for 13 minutes. So now she's externalizing it. She's making you look at these people who just satisfied, but they speak Wajillion, which is a language that doesn't exist. And you didn't understand a word they said. And yet you couldn't get your eyes off them. You watched the whole thing. What happened between them? And everyone knows the story. And then he put his fist down. And then she kind of put her shoulders up. And then he looked up with his eyes with contempt. And then he

decided to just move his shoulder back. Then he sat in his chair with his head on his thigh. And then he opened his legs. And then her head came forward. And then she held her fork. And they're giving you the whole fight. Communication, 101 without any words. Amazing. Or everything I've described pretty much, much of it, not over with it. The principles, anyway, apply to all relational systems. Bands, co-creators, artistic partners. I think it's important to say that because if we just narrow

it to couples, it's a good place to go because people can recognize themselves. But it actually, what I'm talking about is relational thinking in the broad sphere. Tetragramatine is a podcast. Tetragramatine is a website. Tetragramatine is a whole world of knowledge. What may fall within the sphere of tetragramatine?

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It was the classic situation of one person who is home, children involved, the other person is late. He often had an important meeting or calls to say I am sorry, I won't make it, so they are kind about it. I said to that person, please do not apologize. If you apologize, you are saying, look, I am not going to be there, but what I have to do is really more important than being with you. What you could say is thank you.

Thank you because if you were not there, I couldn't stay at my important meeting. Meaning that I get to do what I need to do because you are there and we are part of a larger interdependent relationship. When I say thank you, you actually feel like you matter, you feel like you are enabling me to do something that is going to benefit both of us, hopefully. When you say I am sorry, you are basically saying I am so important.

That is the first thing, appreciation, gratitude, thanking the other person for whatever they do or for being there, for them being able, enabling you to do what you need to do because of who they are and what they do, you can't get enough of it. John Gottman, who is a major research firm on couples who would often say that it is a ratio of 5 to 1,

5 appreciations for one criticism. But I don't know that it is a must and a number thing, but I think that it is a thing that gets lost in relationships. People say thank you to strangers, they say thank you to their employees, they say thank you to their assistants, they say thank you, they don't say enough thank you to their partners. Number one. Number two, it is kind of the opposite of this one, which is Apologies goes a long way.

You know, when you done something and it was off or said something and it was off or wish you had done something different, say I am sorry, own it, be responsible and not because you are being asked. That is even more powerful. I ask in my show, stand up if there is someone you owe an apology to. It is an amazing thing when thousands of people stand up and then the question is have you done it? It is liberating to say I am sorry and whoever says I am sorry first has the power, often.

Not always, but often. Contrary to what we think, if Apologies are surrender, I give up, I admit it is me, I am more responsible than the other. It is very freeing to take responsibility. Not to blame yourself, but to take responsibility. I have noticed this because I often said to people at the end of a relationship when they are doing their separation letters. You know, I wish I had done this differently. Why don't you say this while you are still in the relationship?

Why if you say this when it is over and too late? So gratitude or thanking, appreciation and apologies are two very good habits. Now if you are the one that says I am sorry about everything all the time, then of course we are not talking about you. But those two are very good lubricants for a relationship. Touch is the next one. Touch. You know, we can live without sex, but we can't live without touch.

We become irritable, aggressive and depressed. And what happens often with kids, I sit in an airport, I have done this experiment many many times, and I watch, especially when the flight is delayed, parents who are touching, cuddling, lifting, playing, tickling, squeezing their children. And I am thinking, can there be one for the adult next to you? This is no good. This one nothing, this one, satiate it.

And then as we are going to say, I have nothing left to give, and I am going to say maybe it is that there is nothing more you need. Because you have gotten it. But you have to be able to distribute it a little bit more evenly. So, how many people do you know that are together, 10, 15, 20, 25 years, and they touch, and they touch in public, but now it doesn't, in an inappropriate, just touch.

There is still a physicality between them. I think that that is an amazing lubricant as well. There is more but those three will start. After tragedy, some people bounce back quickly, and others remain stuck for a long time. What determines that? Wow. This is one of the most important questions, mysterious questions for me, but I am going to take it before tragedy. I am going to say why do the same adverse circumstances become the drive of one person and the breakdown of another?

This is the mystery question of life. They have all these experiments where they bring CEOs into prisons with people who are incarcerated for life, and one of the biggest differences is they had a mentor. They had somebody who believed in them. So now I am talking about growing up. I am not just talking in life. I don't have a satisfying answer.

I am talking about why two brothers, two siblings, and for this one, the death of the father is the thing that made them strive, and for this one, the death of the father is the thing that made them completely lose themselves. We could say later on it has to do with how you grew up. My question is on the origin question. Why is the circumstances of one person's life the same circumstance?

The force of one and the weakness of the other. I think it is one of the mysteries of life. I don't have an answer. But having worked in a hospital for quite a few years, this question of people who had children who were sick, or I mean it is probably one of the most challenging things to a relationship.

The loss of a child, the illness of a child, the challenges of children, period, and you could see in the hospital. That was one of those places where you see the couple that comes together around it, and the couple that copes very differently. Before you grieve, you cope, and the coping is very different too. But for the relationship, what is important? Because bouncing back, you have to define, and staying stuck, you have to define.

Does each person accept that this one needs to talk to everybody about it, and this one doesn't say a word? This one has been putting pictures everywhere, and this one has been going for a job every day for two and a half hours. And the relationship that survives is the relationship that can accept that very different way of dealing with the loss. It's acceptance of who each one of the people are. Yes. There's not a right or wrong way. There's not a right or wrong way for most things.

But it's not about right and wrong. It's also that if one person, four years later, is still in an acute sense of grief, then you're saying something is happening that is not enabling the person to come to a certain kind of acceptance. And then turn that loss into a generative source of something that they want to do to the world. I'll work against drunk driving. I'll work to put lights at the corner of this street because so many people have been killed at this corner.

It's not about right or wrong, but it's about something is blocking their stock in this thing. I think the right and wrong takes you in a different space. But is there something, I would say, off? Like, we have a sense of maturation. We have a sense of grief and mourning. And we know what is unresolved mourning. That doesn't mean that you don't mourn every year when it's the...

But when you are stuck in an acute sense of mourning, the tragedy, as if it happened yesterday, and we are four years later, you're something is off, that is making the life of this person so hard. And by extension of their partner or of whoever else is living around them. How is individual therapy different than couples therapy?

Well, it depends on the orientation of the therapist. I would put that in there too, because you can be an individual therapist who is working from a relational perspective. So, it's a lens. Let's say that the focus of individual therapy is what's happening inside of you. And the focus of relational therapy is about what's happening in between. And sometimes, focusing on what happens inside of you helps you with what's happening in between.

And sometimes, an over-focus on what's happening inside of you does not necessarily help you to know what effect you have on others. And to be an expert on your own belly button doesn't necessarily help you realize the effect you have on other people. I think good individual therapy offers you a reparative space to work through the things you had too much of and too little of.

In some way, you could say that the challenges of our childhood are that you either had too much of something or too little of something. And the effect of that on you and where it disables you to experience joy, to experience downfalls, to experience connection, to let go, to surrender, to whatever the big things that we try to do, to have a meaningful life. And they're very different in focus. But fundamentally, I think the arrow goes inside versus the arrow goes in the space in between.

I end out versus I end me. But a good individual therapist will challenge me on that. Because if you do good individual therapy, you're also working on the relationship between this person and others. Can you leave the stories of the day in your office when you leave? Sometimes not. Sometimes I take him home. And I talk with my partner. My husband about it. Sometimes I take them to my peer supervision group.

Sometimes I have a couple of colleagues with whom I say, what would you do here? How shall I handle this? But I do a lot of things that take me out of the headspace into the body space. So I do a lot of yoga. I play tennis. I like to swim in the lake. I do things that don't allow me to hold a phone in my hand and think. Yes. You can't think and play tennis. If you focus on the ball, you can't have a phone and swim.

So I do things that yank me out of the space, actually, in a very physical way. And that helps me reset. Do you ever have couples act things out physically in the session? Physically, in what sense? Stand up, you sit in this chair. All the time, all the time. I was trained in psychodrama. So I do a lot of enactments.

I also did a lot of movement therapy. So yes, I get people up. I get people doing exercises where they stand, where they have to walk toward each other, where I change the seating position. I make them lots of things. Lots of very creative. I do touch exercises of a certain kind that you can do in an office. How does the physicality change the effectiveness? There's an exercise that I put in the course, too. In which basically you take the hand of your partner.

And let's say you're the one who starts. And I ask you to just play with the hand of your partner to explore it, to be curious about it, to focus on your partner and to give touch. So now you're completely focused on them and you're giving touch. For some of us that's very hard to do. For some of us that's all we know to do. Because at some point I'm going to ask you to continue. But now I want you to take touch and to continue to play with the hand of your partner.

But now you're touching yourself. You're pleasing yourself. You're taking touch, which is the healthy entitlement that we need to experience pleasure. And that's the beginning of this exercise. There is nothing I can do verbally that will open the portal to a ton of history, inhibitions, guilt, shame, joy, longing, connection that this little exercise. And that's just the beginning of the exercise. Because the concept of taking touch.

When you get it, it's obvious. But a lot of people don't instantly know what do you mean by taking touch. And why not? And what blocks it? What's behind there? And then you peel off the layers. And I think that we are multilingual. And some things are said with words. Some things are written. Some things are in touch. Some things are in voice. I use music. Because not everybody is equally fluent. I work with people who express themselves with images a lot better than with words.

I think that therapy should not just be talk therapy. One of my favorite things, Exa, is to ask a couple. But that comes in at 17 years. That's one that you asked me before. And I asked him to bring a song. That's a song of the relationship. Stand that in the colleague of mine. And they agree on the song. Sometimes I just asked them in the session, not even to bring. I said, what's a song that used to be a song of the couple?

Then I played. And then I watched how they listened to it. If you want to know who is on their way out, watch how this leaves them cold. One person still is evoked by it. Seize the couple. Remember what it felt like. Remember the juiciness of it. And the other one is like, this is of another era. Everybody has music that they once loved and they kind of wonder what was that. This is the similar kind of an experience. It's very immediate.

Probably in much of what we talked about, the word we didn't use is stories. I think our relationships are stories. I help people to write often and I help them to edit better.